Michael Christie - Greenwood

In 2038 the last forest survives on a remote island off British Columbia. The world's woodlands have been destroyed by a cataclysmic disease, that has destroyed huge swathes of humanity and undermined the global economy. The forest, private land, is tended by scientists and forest guides who maintain it for the wealthy tourists to visit to be "regenerated in the humbling loom" of the last trees. Jake Greenwood shares her name with the billionaire owner of the island, a timber tycoon whose wealth was based on the ravaging of North America's woodland. Now Jake is heavily in debt and desperate to cling on to her job.

The Greenwood island is at the epicentre of this multigenerational story. Jake is the latest of a long line of people, who have an association with the land and the forests, and after the opening chapters that detail her place on Earth, the story skips back 150 years to tell how the rich got rich and destroyed the land, woods and people along the way. Its an epic tale, much of which centres on an itinerant veteran of World War One who makes his living tapping maple trees for syrup, and comes across an abandoned baby. Persuded by the powerful and wealthy agents of the millionaire father, Everett carries the baby through a North America wracked by economic depression. This story forms the centre piece for the remaining links to Jake, and the modern world - the story of an abandoned baby and a world gone chaotic around her.

Its an amazing tale, and Michael Christie has done wonders to weave countless threads together. From the 1930s depression era railroad cars to Earth First style direct actions against logging equipment, the book is filled with fully drawn characters, who constantly force the reader to ask themselves why we live in a world with so much beauty at the same time as hunger and destruction surround us. But this is no crude political tract, its a story that links future dystopia to a chain of events - both human and economic. The powers unleashed by a handful of billionaires in search of yet more wealth, draw countless others into the swirling maw. The trees that are stripped and destroyed and burnt along the way, merely fuel for the accumulation of wealth, yet poignant reminders of what we stand to loose. Great novel.